Rich Internet Applications

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are websites or experiences that are especially rich in both their user interface and in their data handling. We’ve been making them since 2002.

Websites

Rich, interactive websites are perhaps our speciality. Closed within an Adobe Flash Player™ environment, the experience for the user is consistent across browsers, it’s interactive, smooth, entertaining and can optionally contain both audio and video. The days of “skip intro” with these sites are gone. We can now arrange for them to load very fast, access data only when they need it, and at all times be responsive and retain the attention of your audience.

We can even create content-rich websites which are entirely populated from a back-end Content Management System, and we can make them deep linkable and search-engine friendly.

Elegant transitions, fast response time and immersive media make these sites the natural choice for creating a strong, memorable and unique brand presence.

Microsites

Sometimes a client does not require a full RIA website, but rather a rich sub-element of the site – a microsite. Microsites form part of so-called “hybrid” websites. They are applications within applications and might be, for example, an interactive showcase for a new car launch, or a mood piece promoting a perfume. If a rich, engaging experience for your audience needs to be placed within your site, we might recommend a microsite for you.

Games

Another kind of RIA are online games. We have made several of these for the BBC, among other clients. Games can be made very topical and appealing for users. They can be an effective way of increasing and enhancing a brand’s profile. Games can also “go viral”, which means that links to them are shared via the Internet, increasing the amount of players.

We’re able to create everything from simple puzzles to multi-player online games. These can then be linked to a player’s Facebook profile, for example. If you’d like your users to engage with your brand, remember it and spread it, a game is an ideal option – especially at Christmas.

E-learning applications

E-learning applications are often required not only for the Web but also by companies as part of their Intranet, to train staff. They can involve walk-throughs, the watching of slides and videos and more interactive drag and drop exercises or questionnaires.

We can create these for you. We can even involve more sophisticated interaction such as microphone control and augmented reality. The progress of your staff can be tracked and saved, and their sessions resumed. Introduce us to your requirements, and we’ll show you what we can do.

Desktop applications

Sometimes what you need is Rich Internet Application which does not run within a web browser at all, but rather runs on the user’s computer like any other program (an example of this is the BBC’s iPlayer Desktop®).

The main advantage of these is that they can interact very closely with your user’s computer, saving files to, and loading them from the file system (with the user’s permission). These applications usually utilise Adobe’s Air™ runtime, which many users already have installed since it is bundled with Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. If you need the additional power offered by a desktop-based RIA, we’ll build one for you.